That Recurring Anxiety
by phaedraphelan
Summary: Sherlock faces a test of his sobriety that threatens to derail him. He reaches out to Joan. What will she do? This is a tag for Season three, Episode 9.


**That Recurring Anxiety**

**By phaedraphelan**

**Word count: 1,999**

Summary: Sherlock's anxiety about maintaining his sobriety surfaces again when his routine of group meetings is interrupted. How will Joan help him find the strength he needs? (I thought Mr. Miller's acting during this sequence was some of the finest of the series. He so well captured the emotional agony of the person battling addiction.)

Disclaimer: Elementary is the artistic property of CBS and no infringement is intended.

**The intrusion of a thoughtless individual into Sherlock's privacy by putting his meeting comments on line in a blog had severely affected his attendance at the meetings that did so much to support his sobriety. Sherlock's beginning to feel that he was slipping had been aggravated by his watching Joan involved in another ill-fated affair with a man who could not possibly meet her needs while still maintaining her emotional distance from Sherlock. When he refused to go to his meeting and Joan basically threw up her hands in frustration and started to leave him there all alone to face his demons, Sherlock had suddenly called her back in a moment of sheer desperation.**

**"Watson, I am not doing well. . . my sobriety . . . I . . . I am struggling."**

**Joan turned and walked back toward him, immediately sensing the pain in his voice, following him back from the lock room into the library where he sat down. He was obviously in a state of agitation even though he tried to speak dispassionately, as he began to reveal his deep anxiety to Joan.**

**"It is the day to day relentlessness, the repetitiveness, the tediousness of maintaining my sobriety. It yields just what amounts to controlling mere drips from a leaking faucet, mere drips in sense of a return for the effort that is put forth . . . a drip, drip, drip. I sometimes feel that were I to relapse, it would not be some grand drama, but an anticlimax of sorts."**

**Joan came and stood opposite him, all her concern for him reflected in her expressive eyes. Her calm expression belied the turmoil inside her as she saw the man she loved in such anguish.**

**"What do you want me to do? You have your work. You have Alfredo." Joan paused before continuing. "You have me. I'm here, Sherlock, to help you."**

**Joan saw his noble ****features begin to crumple slightly as his painful emotions consumed him and her heart felt as if it would break at the sight of this man she loved in a state of such agony. She sat down, her hands folded in an attempt to remain professional in this moment of crisis. She had not seen him in such pain since Alistair's death from overdose and she knew that tears were just below the surface.**

**Joan came to him and knelt at his knee, caught his hand in hers and turned his roughened palm upward so that she could kiss it tenderly and hold it to her soft cheek. The gesture so overwhelmed Sherlock that the tears filling his eyes spilled over and ran down his cheeks.**

**"Joan, I do need you. I have needed you for so long. Please help me. Help me!" he said, his voice breaking. **

**"What do you need from me, Sherlock?"**

**"I fear that I am in dire need of that hug you offered a while ago."**

**Sherlock drew Joan up onto his lap and she wrapped her arms around him in a warm hug. The next moment their lips met in just a whisper of a kiss. **

**"Sherlock. . . Sher. . . lock," Joan moaned softly as Sherlock's lips quickly became hungry upon hers, his hands beginning to search all over her body as his mouth opened over hers claiming it even as she yielded completely to his kiss.**

**Suddenly they were both transported as the desires that had smoldered for so long in their hearts caught fire and began to consume them. Sherlock lifted Joan up, carried her to the sofa and bore her back in his arms, kissing her face, her neck, and finally her lips once again.**

**"Help me, Joan. I need you. I love you more than anyone in the world. I dare not encroach, Joan, but please."**

**"I give you permission. I do love you, Sherlock."**

**"Please. May I take your hair down, Joan?" Sherlock asked softly.**

**"Yes, you may."**

**Sherlock loosened the clip holding Joan's hair so that it fell down onto her shoulders and they stared at each other.**

**"God, you are so beautiful," Sherlock said in awe.**

**After a long moment, they began to tug at each other's clothes and to rub and caress each other frantically, moaning and groaning together till Sherlock drew Joan's hand to his excited flesh.**

**"Take care of me, luv. Please!"**

**And Joan took him, welcoming him as they both cried out for the joy of finally coming together as they quickly found their rhythm.**

**Sherlock was powerful upon Joan and they knew immediately that they were perfectly matched when Joan's lashes began to flutter and she wrapped her legs around Sherlock. She was in total rapture in his embrace, crying his name, as their passions took them and shook them to their foundations.**

**"Ooh, Sherlock! Sherlock! I'm seeing stars!"**

**Joan was trembling helplessly in climax as Sherlock grunted and panted upon her, his whole body beginning to vibrate as the acme came upon him and the bright lights that signaled his release cascaded through his brain.**

**"Oh, God, luv," Sherlock gasped as he was seized with powerful spasms in his pelvis and what seemed like a super nova exploded in his brain. "God help me!"**

**"Sherlock . . . Yes! Yes!"**

**But when he felt Joan surrender completely, melting in capitulation to him, his response was to cry her name out in exultation.**

**"Joan! Yes, Joan!"**

**And then neither of them could speak as the full force of their coming together rolled over them.**

**"Sherlock, I love you," Joan finally whispered to him when she regained the ability to speak. "Please don't give up, baby. Please just don't give up. I need you, Sherlock."**

**"My dearest Joan, my dearest," Sherlock murmured, tightening his arms around Joan as their passions mounted again.**

**"Yes, Sherlock . . . Oh, yes . . ."**

**They were rocking together in the universal rhythm of lovers and all the anxiety, all the uncertainty that had been threatening to engulf them faded away. Joan was a woman needing a man like Sherlock, a woman possessed of all the sensuality needed to give Sherlock everything he craved physically along with the emotional support that he needed. They cried together as they made love and when Sherlock became like a wild horse on her, Joan scratched him and bit him and Sherlock smacked her hard on her nates as she met him passion for passion till they were tossed over the summit and saw stars again together.**

**As Joan slid in surrender to him, she lost all consciousness of anything except Sherlock on her and inside her as they seemed to be floating in another dimension entirely, melting into one another, whispering all the love words to each other that they had held locked inside their hearts for so long.**

**And Sherlock held her against his throbbing heart till they fell asleep.**

**Joan was awakened the next morning by Sherlock's bugle song and she was greeted by an ebullient Sherlock marching in with a breakfast tray of coffee, fresh fruit, and toast with marmalade. He sat down beside her on the sofa and they enjoyed breakfast together. His dark mood of the previous evening was gone except for a faint trace of sadness in his eyes that only Joan would recognize. When they finished and sat quietly drinking their coffee, Sherlock put his hand across the top of Joan's thighs as he reflected with her on the events of the previous night.**

**"I must tell you, my lovely Joan, that I have never experienced in my life what we shared last night. I had no one to turn to other than to you, but I did not imagine that things would become so . . . heated, that we would lose ourselves in each other the way that we did, that you would so generously give yourself as you did."**

**Joan flushed as Sherlock spoke to her now and she reached to cover his hand with hers and rest her head on his shoulder.**

**"You said that you love me, Joan. I know that I love you. I have loved you for a very long time, but I feared that my history of addiction would be such a significant deficit that you would reject me. When you said to me 'you have me' . . . and said it without reservation, my heart . . . my heart became so full that I knew that the tears were going to come."**

**"I can't help loving you, Sherlock. I have tried to love others, but it's no use.**

**"You are so very passionate, my little China doll. I lost all control of myself. I hope that I was not too rough with you," Sherlock said as he patted her flat lower belly.**

**"You are like a wild horse when you get going, you know," Joan teased him gently, flashing her dark eyes at him. "But you did not hurt me, Sherlock. Did I hurt you?"**

**"I will gladly wear every one of your passion marks, luv."**

**Sherlock leaned over and kissed Joan tenderly on her mouth. "Your lips are swollen from my kisses, luv."**

**"I don't mind, Sherlock. I didn't mind any of it, not any of it."**

**Sherlock leaned in for another tender kiss.**

**"I was quite depressed last night," Sherlock continued. "I believe depression is the chief enemy of sobriety. When I was in London, it very nearly conquered my sobriety several times. And I did not have you there to pull on my coat tails. I had to come back to you, Joan. I don't think I could not have survived London if my energy had not been involved in rehabilitating Kitty."**

**"I have tried to deny my feelings for you for so long. I . . . I realize that to be one reason that I was vulnerable to Mycroft. I wish that none of that had ever happened, Sherlock."**

**"That is of no consequence now. I hold no resentment toward you whatsoever. I only feel the deepest gratitude to you for loving me the way you did last night." Sherlock lifted Joan's hand to his lips before continuing. "I think that you know that one of the things that fuels addiction is the constant search to equal the very first 'high.' It is one of the principal reasons for overdoses. But, my dear Joan, when it happened for me with you last night, I saw all the stars of the galaxy in a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors more intense than any drug high that I have ever experienced. And then we went to that same place again and it was even more mind-blowing than the first. Hearing you cry out the way that you did when you were in ekstase, seeing your lashes flutter the way they did and then your eyes roll back in you****r head when it happened for you was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. After that, I went blind and all I could feel was a sensation that was as if my testes were exploding."**

**"Is that when I bit your clavicle, Sherlock? And when you smacked my behind."**

**"I don't know, luv. I was in another zone by then. I only deduced this from the evidence you left on my body. I did feel the long scratches when you inflicted them on my shoulders. And that pain was most delightful."**

**Joan blushed and smiled at Sherlock knowingly and unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back, revealing the bite mark on his collarbone and the long red scratch marks on both his shoulders.**

**"I am sorry, baby," Joan said as she examined the scratches she had inflicted on his shoulders.**

**"I'm not in the least," Sherlock said as he kissed Joan's cheek and then eagerly sought another kiss from Joan's lips. "Please, I do need to kiss you again."**

**This time Sherlock's open mouth searched and opened Joan's lips and they lost themselves in the kiss as it deepened and then Joan caught her hands in his hair as the kiss overwhelmed them completely.**

**"Dash it all, Joan! Please come home to me now, " he said, his voice roughened with desire as he drew Joan up onto his lap.**


End file.
